In fact, however, NATO was given a central role in Afghanistan because of the influence of U.S. officials concerned with the alliance, according to a U.S. military officer who was in a position to observe the decision-making process.
"NATO's role in Afghanistan is more about NATO than it is about Afghanistan," the officer, who insisted on anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the subject, told IPS in an interview.
The
alliance would never have been given such a prominent role in
Afghanistan but for the fact that the George W. Bush administration
wanted no significant U.S. military role there that could interfere with
their plans to take control of Iraq.
That reality gave U.S. officials working on NATO an opening.
Gen.
James Jones, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) from 2003 to
2005, pushed aggressively for giving NATO the primary security role in
Afghanistan, according to the officer.
"Jones sold [Defence
Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld on turning Afghanistan over to NATO," said
the officer, adding that he did so with the full support of Pentagon
officials with responsibilities for NATO. "You have to understand that
the NATO lobbyists are very prominent in the Pentagon " both in the
Office of the Secretary of Defence and on the Joint Staff," said the
officer.
Jones admitted in an October 2005 interview with
American Forces Press Service that NATO had struggled to avoid becoming
irrelevant after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of
the Warsaw Pact. "NATO was in limbo for a bit," he said.
But the 9/11 attacks had offered a new opportunity for NATO to demonstrate its relevance.
The
NATO allies were opposed to the U.S. war in Iraq, but they wanted to
demonstrate their support for stabilising and reconstructing
Afghanistan. Jones prodded NATO member countries to provide troops for
Afghanistan and to extend NATO operations from the north into the west
and eventually to the east and south, where U.S. troops were
concentrated.
That position coincided with the interests of
NATO's military and civilian bureaucrats and those of the military
establishments in the member countries.
But there was one major
problem: public opinion in NATO member countries was running heavily
against military involvement in Afghanistan.
To get NATO allies
to increase their troop presence in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, Jones
assured member states that they would only be mopping up after the U.S.
military had defeated the Taliban. On a visit to Afghanistan in August
2004, Jones said, "[W]e should not ever even think that there is going
to be an insurrection of the type that we see in Iraq here. It's just
not going to happen."
Reassured by Washington and by Jones, in
September 2005, NATO defence ministers agreed formally that NATO would
assume command of southern Afghanistan in 2006.
But conflicts
immediately arose between the U.S. and NATO member countries over the
NATO mission in Afghanistan. Britain, Germany, Canada and the
Netherlands had all sold the NATO mission to their publics as
"peacekeeping" or "reconstruction" as distinct from counterinsurgency
war.
When the Bush administration sought to merge the U.S. and
NATO commands in Afghanistan, key allies pushed back, arguing the two
commands had different missions. The French, meanwhile, were convinced
the Bush administration was using NATO troops to fill the gap left by
shifting U.S. troops from Afghanistan to Iraq - a war they strongly
opposed.
The result was that one NATO member state after another
adopted "caveats" that ruled out or severely limited their troops from
actually carrying out combat in Afghanistan.
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